Friday, February 6, 2015

Descriptive Writing by a Master.

Vienna, 1938.

I UNDERSTAND THAT people have taken television features on
the holocaust very calmly. To witness the actual beating up of a Jew outside
one’s hotel makes a difference. He was a respectable man of about fifty years,
very well dressed and with a confident walk. He may have been taking a morning
stroll. I was watching from my balcony. He paused for a moment outside the
hotel and nodded affably to the commissionaire. At that moment five young men
emerged from a side alley. They were dressed perfectly normally saved for the
suddenly fashionable Swastika armbands. They stood around the Jew and
apparently exchanged one or two words with him. I saw that he was smiling
uncertainly as he answered. The commissionaire had turned his back and was
walking away. Then one of the youths produced a short cudgel and struck the Jew
a blow which hit his chest and sent him reeling back until he struck his head
against the wall of the hotel. He looked, I remember, merely surprised, or
perhaps the breath had been knocked out of him. All five youths now produced short truncheons. I could not
from my balcony discern whether they were rubber or wood or metal. Then they
beat him about the head. His face was suddenly covered with blood as though
somebody had thrown a can of red paint at it. He slid down to the ground. Then
two of the youths kicked him until he rolled to the edge of the pavement. There
he lay quite still on his back. His jaw fell open, his eyes rolled up until
they showed the whites. Clearly he was dead A passerby saw him and crossed to
the other side of the street. A woman coming from the other direction was held
up by the white gloved hand of the commissionaire. She seemed to protest she
was in a hurry. The youths disappeared. The woman carried on. The commissionaire
walked at a stately pace into the hotel and I imagine the receptionist made a
telephone call. What happened then I do not know because I went to the bathroom
and was sick. When I had recovered, the body was gone but the blood remained.